Letter on NGO Law from CIDSE agency to EU Delegation in Cambodia

Mr. Seamus Gillespie,
Head of Unit for South East Asia,
European External Action Services,
Directorate-General of the European Commission ,
Brussels.
cc. Mr. Rafael Dochao Moreno, Head of Delegation, Phnom Penh
2 August 2011
Dear Mr. Gillespie,
We would like to thank you for meeting with CIDSE members and
our Cambodian partner NGO Forum on 11 July. It was a positive
opportunity to exchange information about the situation in Cambodia
and to share with you the specific concerns of civil society
organisations (CSO) relating to the draft NGO law.
However, as you will be aware, the third draft of the law has n ow
been made public and we are gravely concerned to see that few of
the key issues raised by civil society have been addressed. We note
that some positive amendments have been made relating to the
registration process and that an appeals process for national NGOs
has been introduced but the law still fails to consider the following
fundamental issues, namely
1. Registration is mandatory and complex, rather than voluntary
and simple
2. There is no appeal process for the denial of registration for
international NGOs and the process for national NGOs is
unclear
3. There is an absence of clear criteria for refusal of registration
to both national and international NGOs
Furthermore, although the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) has
invited CSOs to submit written comments on the new draft of the
law, the time period in which to do this is extraordinarily short (one
week) and we note that the draft has already been passed on to the
Council of Ministers and is likely to proceed quickly to the National
Assembly. Past experience has shown that once legislation reaches
this stage, there is very limited opportunity for the incorporation of
further changes. In the absence of any clear timeline, the legislation
could pass at any time so there is a real need for urgent action from
the international community.

You mentioned that the EC Delegation would be meeting with the
RGC to discuss the law in August. In your capacity as a key
development and trade partner of Cambodia, we ask you to
1) Use this August meeting to call on the RGC to prevent this law
from being passed until the aforementioned concerns of CSOs
are adequately addressed. We welcomed your commitment for
the EC Delegation to meet with Cambodian civil society to feed
back to them following this August meeting and would invite
the Delegation to coordinate directly with the civil society core
group to arrange this.
2) We also ask you to write to the Prime Minister and Deputy
Prime Minister of Cambodia to raise these concerns directly, as
well as the Council of Ministers and the Chairman of the
National Assembly.
As we expressed to you in our meeting, if the legislation passes in
its current form, it will significantly restrict the voice and space of
civil society organisations in a country where we are already seeing
an increase in the incidences of intimidation, arrest and prosecution
by the RGC against its critics. In the absence of any meaningful
political opposition in Cambodia, civil society serves as the only real
means to hold government accountable.
The window of opportunity to ensure that this law strengthens
rather than hinders civil society is rapidly closing. We recognise that
this is a politically sensitive issue but ask you to use all diplomatic
channels available to you to further highlight these concerns as soon
as possible.
We look forward to hearing from you,
Sincerely,
Bernd Nilles
Secretary General